The Trials of Phillis Wheatley (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Literary biography and literary criticism
- Time of Work: The late eighteenth century
- Setting: Boston
- Principal Characters: Phillis Wheatley, Thomas Jefferson, The committee
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: African Americans, North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Africa or Africans, Blacks, Abolitionists, Slavery or slaves, Literature, Poetry or poets, Trials, Eighteenth century, Imagination, Reading, Boston, Kidnapping, Captivity, Intellect, Literacy, Allusions, Massachusetts
- Locales: Boston, MA
This essay is an expanded version of the lecture Henry Louis Gates, Jr., presented at the Library of Congress in March, 2002, as one of a series of the prestigious Jefferson Lectures in the Humanities. In his analysis of the controversy surrounding Phillis Wheatley’s poetry, Gates demonstrates that theoretical issues debated in the academy are indeed relevant to the everyday lives of Americans. Gates, chairman of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, is a prominent intellectual. In his preface he states that the National Endowment for the...
[The entire page is 1762 words long]
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